Patty cakes

Here’s a pic of me at about 4 years old with a mullet (thanks mum). All wide-eyed and innocent, not having a single clue about anything. I was a happy kid, always smiling, easily amused.

Like most kids I suppose.

This was taken in the backyard of our home in Egypt, where my sister and I would congregate after a hard day at preschool. We’d ‘play’ with our tortoises, or in the dirt of a small garden patch that turned into mud after intense rain.

I remember in the summer we’d make patty cakes from the wet mud, molding them with our hands and then placing them on a stump of wood to dry. I remember this being absolutely mesmerizing. I can almost smell that thick musty air and that unforgiving humidity.

Isn’t weird to look back on old pictures of ourselves? Especially as young children?

It’s back before the world really left its mark on us. Before life really had a chance to give us some serious knockout rounds that caused us to bend and warp and bleed like hell.

We just have no idea what life chooses to present us with, do we? It almost makes me want to reach into that photograph and hug little me, the little girl who would gladly spend the rest of her life making patty cakes beside her big sister.